


Tower of Saviours

by ThatDamnKennedyKid



Series: Tower of Saviours [1]
Category: Big Bang (Band)
Genre: Dragon!Jiyong, Dryad!Seungri, Elder Vampire!TOP, Hellhound!Taeyang, Inspired by Tower of Saviours promotions, Siren!Daesung, Supernatural Elements, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-17
Updated: 2016-03-31
Packaged: 2018-05-27 05:20:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6271396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatDamnKennedyKid/pseuds/ThatDamnKennedyKid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This whole collection, this little mismatched group of races, all began with Daesung. He was just good at collecting people.</p><p>(Cross-posted from AFF.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Daesung

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Supernatural!AU - inspired by the Bae Bae video and Bigbang's promotion of Tower of Saviours
> 
> TOP/Seunghyun - Elder vampire (Light) - born c. 20,000 BC
> 
> G-Dragon/Jiyong - Dragon (Darkness) - born c. 1500 BC
> 
> Taeyang/Yongbae - Hellhound (Fire) - born c. 500 BC
> 
> Daesung - Siren (Water) - born c. 1500 AD
> 
> Seungri - Dryad (Earth) - born c. 1850 AD
> 
> To give some context to their ages, TOP was born just before Neanderthals died out, G-Dragon was born around the time Troy fell, Taeyang was born around the founding of Rome (though discovered some time in 1960), Daesung was born in the Renaissance and Seungri was born during the height of the British Empire. 
> 
>  
> 
> Picture Sources:
> 
> http://bigbangupdates.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/savior4.jpg
> 
> http://images.kpopstarz.com/data/images/full/183929/seungri-tower-of-saviors.jpg?w=600
> 
> http://bigbangupdates.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/savior6.jpg
> 
> http://images.kpopstarz.com/data/images/full/183931/g-dragon-tower-of-saviors.jpg?w=600
> 
> http://bigbangupdates.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/savior3.jpg
> 
> http://bigbangupdates.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/bigbang_tos.jpg

Daesung had come from deep within the Pacific Ocean, so far down in the water that he'd only had a notion of what sunlight was as little as a hundred years ago. 

Apparently, then, some war - or wars - happened. Suddenly, not only are there bodies of shipwrecked sailors and their faulty wooden floaters to contend with, but sailors trapped in metal tubes with turbines that could easily slice a fish up if they weren't so  _deafening_. The sounds that echoed deep within those evil tubes sounded horrible - constant yelling and the sounds of machinery within wrenching in effort - the fish almost felt bad for the dwellers within. 

"No such cramped space can be good for those accustomed to being surrounded by sky." An orca had once said, keening a little mournfully. "It would be like being trapped in a shallow pool on the Rock."

Daesung had pet her side sympathetically, his shimmering blue tail almost black at this depth. He'd never been to the surface himself, been warned against it by his parents before they were done raising him and went their separate ways, leaving him behind, but neither had he ever gotten incentive to go any further. 

Turtles would complain about this thing called  _plastic_  and how it looked so much like jellyfish, but didn't taste like jellyfish and would choke them. Dolphins had brought gossip from sea-faring winged ones that said the ocean was getting slimier and the fish more sickly. Not to mention that there were more and more rock dwellers who would send down their blinkless eyes or submerse themselves willingly in those terrifying cages or tubes. The very thought made him shudder. 

According to other fish, many of Daesung's own kind liked to live together - not in pods or schools, just sharing a territory. He'd never run across anyone other than his own parents here, and even them he hadn't seen since his maturity. Occasionally, he would wonder what happened to them, but was never particularly invested. He had been a Pacific Mer and she was a Siren from the Mediterranean visiting a friend when he had inconveniencedthem with being concieved. 

That was fine. He preferred the company of the whales and turtles, or exploring the very depths of the ocean floors, finding great pleasure in napping on the warmth of a ready volcano. Their gentle rumbles were nice to ease him to sleep, especially the brand-new rock, still sizzling the water with heat. 

He didn't particularly care to stay in one place, as others of his kind were prone to, and travelled the waters freely, having been pseudo-adopted into many pods that would care for him if he would travel with them.

"Why do you keep me?" He'd once asked a podmate. 

"You have such a beautiful, ringing voice. It's like when you talk, you sing." The orca, Chanyeol, answered. "It's absolutely lovely to listen to your stories just to hear you talk. Your laugh echoes through the whole ocean. I don't think I've heard a stronger voice."

"It's magical." Another packmate, Baekhyun, had confirmed. "I think that's why everyone is so drawn to you. You're enchanting."

Daesung travelled with them to the end of a rock that the rock dwellers called  _Korea_ , though that was always changing. Had changed at least six times in the short four hundred years he'd been alive. He bid that pod, EXO-K, good luck and safe migration, waving at them as they swam off. It was soon after that he noticed a metal tube, this one eternally long it seemed and small enough that it wasn't even wide enough to encompass his shoulders. Ensnared by curiosity, he followed the tube - a  _pipe_ , if he recalled correctly - prodding at it when he came to a place were it looked like octopus ink was leaking. Was this a metal octopus?

As he approached it, he realized it was a  _plastic_  pipe leading away, no bigger than his bicep. He followed it, right up to the surface, eyes tracking it once he broke surface. It ran right to the beach, into an ugly structure that didn't look natural, like the instant-hardening lava, though it was just as black. He decided he didn't like it and swam the other direction. It wasn't long, though, before he came across more blackness, settling like an ooze on top of the water. He turned away from it, skittish, and swam north. Suddenly, there was the terrible screech of metal and a thick wave. 

As soon as the black substance touched him, he was repulsed, trying to get it off him as fast as possible, though it seemed resistent to water. Another wave and it was all over him, seeping into the gills on his neck and ribs and choking him. 

He thrashed like that for a long time, drowning in his own water and whatever toxin this darkness was. He swam away from it has hard as he could while flighting suffocation, eventually backing up into rock. He took his chances - getting captured by a Rock hunter be damned - and hauled himself up the short but sheer cliff-face. 

There were large-leafed plants there and thick rockweed there which seemed to take the blackness away, and he quickly used them to get it out of his gills. Once he could breathe, he could concentrate on being dirty.

"Hey, what the hell are you-?!"

Daesung turned around then, vomiting up the last of what he would come to understand was  _oil_  before he looked up to the face of a shocked dryad. He looked at the mess around him, unable to stop his last heave, vomiting up the last of the slick grease. "I'm sorry. I know this is a toxin, but this was the only place I could escape it."

The dryad was at his side immediately. "Oh, you poor thing. You're from the ocean, aren't you?"

He nodded, collapsing onto the solid ground to catch his breath, this deep lungs finally getting oxygen. "Yeah."

"But the looks of it, a tanker just hit a rock and is spilling again." He knelt down, gently moving plastered bangs out of his eyes. "Don't worry about the oil. My plants are very resistant. C'mon, let's get you cleaned up. My name's Seungri."


	2. Seungri

Seungri wasn't very old, by the standards of his people. Maybe only five hundred years or so - only as long as his forest had been around. He was proud to say that his tree was one of the original forest seeders (humans were always so very concerned with understanding how things made more things, always gendering, but his tree was neither male nor female, like Seungri himself). 

No, for a dryad, he wasn't very old, but that was okay. An older nymph, BoA, had been there to help him, displaced from her woodlands in Greece a long time ago. She had raised him, in a sense - taught him magic and the many languages of the flowerkind, how to interpret the long-winded whispers of the trees and the hushed chatter of the grasses and shrubs. 

When she had intially called him a 'he' (a concept completely foreign to him, really, all of this pronoun nonsense) and taught him the human language of  _Korean_ , he had asked her what the difference between 'she' and 'he' was and why BoA was a she but he was not. 

"Our races, nymphs and dryads, are very similar. Where I came from, the humans considered them one and the same. Our abilities are quite similar, but we come from very different avenues. As such, when they first saw us, they saw the forms of nymphs akin to the females of their species, 'women', and believed dryads were the 'male' version. Thus, I am female and you are male because our forms look like human women and men."

He still didn't understand it, not until he saw the two different kinds of humans with his own eyes as they cut through his forest, apparently in some civil war, and killed each other there. He couldn't tell the differences initially, like he hadn't been able to separate his form from that of BoA's, but that was okay. He wasn't able to save those people -  _soldiers_  - but that was okay too. 

As time passed, he learned to deal with the destruction of his home, war and industry slowly eroding it, those taking not even having the decency to give back. But again, he would save the saplings and the nuts, planting them away from the looming grey taking over the skyline and plant them close to the salt of the sea, though he knew that wasn't completely safe either. 

The best part about this  _modernism_  was that the Hunters had practically vanished, now their family clans only small, ununited factions on commision by some body of people who told the others what to do - BoA had called it a  _government_ , but he still didn't understand what it did - to keep the Ethereal races out of the cities. Sometimes, when he was planting seedlings, he would see generations of farmers, would would stare at him wide-eyed. He would smile at them and they would break out of their stupor, ducking away like they hadn't seen him. Occasionally, too, children of those famers would get lost in his woodlands. He would run into them as he checked up on his windblown friends, spreading water and life-magic into them to help them reach the sun, ever drowning in the man-made black skies. These little ones didn't run from him like their parents, didn't look away like the elders. They would come up to him, pressing their small hands into the moss on his legs, the smooth bark of his outer flesh, the earthen brown sweetgrass of growing on the top of his head. 

"You're so lovely." A little girl had cooed at him, tracing over his nose when he knelt down to talk to her. "All the stories say you'll eat us right up, but you're just so lovely."

That particular little girl hadn't been willing to go back home, and he had come to find out that she no longer had one; the same war that was stealing his forest (setting it on fire, no less!) had stolen her home as well, her family vanished along with it. 

"I think they're in Seoul, hiding." She had said, curled up with him one night. "But I can't make it that far. I don't know the way."

That winter had almost seen the poor thing dead. Seungri didn't know how humans braved the cold, but he assumed because work stopped that they hibernated like the trees. It had taken a considerable amount of sweet-talking and a generous gift of life-magic to get an old oak, preparing to rest the winter, to open itself up for an inside tenant. A scavenge of her old town had yielded old, but useful coverings for her exposed flesh and a crop of mushrooms had stopped the young girl from starvation taking her next.Perhaps it also helped that Seungri was what she called a 'human greenhouse', whatever that was. 

That little girl had been found by Hunters a few years later. They had marvelled at her survival while Seungri cowered inside a tree, ready to melt into the earth and vanish from them, but unwilling to leave the girl behind. She had tried to explain how Seungri had helped her, but the lead Hunter had only shaken his head.

 "Stupid girl. Dryads don't help anyone." He had said. "You're lucky he didn't kill you on the spot. Hateful creatures."

As they had dragged her away, back to humankind, she had called out one last mournful goodbye, hand outstretched to him. All of he could do was drop an acorn into her hand, unable to hug her tightly and wish her farewell like he wanted, lest he be torched before her eyes. 

And so he spent the next fifty years alone, BoA having moved on shortly after the wars started. That is, of course, until a he-Siren washed up onto his forest floor. 

The Siren, Daesung, was an odd, curious creature. Like Seungri, he seemed to be able to melt into his element, salt water, even able to turn his whole body to liquid. In his panic, drowning in the oil slick on the surface, he had forgotten about it, only trying to escape the sensation of suffocation. Plus, Daesung had explained, it takes a decent amount of concentration to do it, and to stop breathing until the transformation is complete. 

Seungri came to really like Daesung, and Daesung liked Seungri. They became friends relatively quickly, and Daesung, having learned he could mould his lower half in water form to give himself legs, stayed with him. He was afraid to enter the water again, unnerved and daunted by his experience, even though he was leaving all of the fish and mammals he loved and was fond of back in the ocean. 

But Seungri was happy to have him, especially when the humans came back, massive machines and thick, pluming fire starting at one end of his forest and sweeping across it in a rush. 

Daesung had noticed it first, then Seungri started to hear the growing shrieks of his woodland. Before he could save it, the fire reached his sire tree and Seungri felt the water pumps in his body stop, his whole being freezing with agony. He knew that his tree was sacred - magic given to those trees were rare, and their dryad spawn rarer; the connection between the two was intimate, two lifeforces bound together. 

If it weren't for Daesung, he would have died there, with the only home he'd ever known, the place he'd been born into and thrown his whole life into nuturing. He just . . .  _He didn't undertstand why._  

"Seungri!" Daesung's voice was desperate, fear licking up the back of his spine, harshly tugging on his arm. "Seungri!"

The pain was unimaginable, his magic ripping in half. It felt like he was crumbling from the inside out. He couldn't hold himself together, couldn't take the flame consuming his soul. 

"Seungri, no!" Daesung's voice was thick with terror, his face blurry when Seungri collapsed into his arms. The thick arms of the Siren held him fast as he bent down, pressing their lips together, some kind of chill ocean life breathed deep into his chest, hardening the burning timber of his connection to his sire tree into submersed charcoal, the sweet relief of wetness filling the cindered hole where the other half of his soul used to be. 

When Daesung pulled back, stroking gently over his face, he was no longer burning, the hurt more in his heart, a yearning already for what was, but he could not move. Daesung seemed to know this, gathering him in arms made sturdy and powerful though a lifetime of seafaring and the last years he spent climbing trees to keep up with Seungri before taking off towards the sea, jumping in without hesitation, fire jumping at his heels and almost catching him before the surf rose up to meet him, catching the two beings in liquid ice. 

Seungri blacked out then, the cold shock too much for his body to take, even with the insulated warmth of Daesung curled around him. 


	3. T.O.P.

TOP. 

That's what they called him.

He forgot his name, the one his mother had given him. And it wasn't like he could ask any of the siblings he'd had, considering they were dead. Nor did his parents survive. His father, a born vampire, had been staked in the sun, shrivelling away shortly after his mother had gotten pregnant. His mother had retreated to her mountainside grotto, regretful for the other's death, but not particularly moved. He was a fling - a moment of passion - not family or anyone she had ever intended to  _love_. 

All he remembered of her and the place he'd been raised in was that it was the home of a renowned White Mage - a child of the sun and the moon, back before they retreated from the earth. He knew that humans had been very new then, at least new to their present form. Even then, though, they had been fearful. Some of the Ethereal Races they took as gods, like the succubi Aphrodite and Venus, or the undead necromancer Osiris, who haunted the west bank of the Nile near what would come to be the Nile Delta. Others, less powerful, they took as demons and savagely slaughtered them. 

Over time, those prized few were caged too thoroughly and starved, but he had not. 

His siblings, pure White Mages, had disliked him from the start, though his mother did not show any special affection for him more than the others. She had, however, told him of what he was and why his siblings disliked him; he was an Elder Vampire, a special breed that almost never happened. It only came from a vampire and a White Mage. Usually, the power of a White Mage would kill the unborn child or cancel out the vampire genes. In him, however, both had survived. 

He was not undead, as he'd learned, because his heart beat with a pulse and his blood was far from sluggish and black when he was cut. He'd been staked, too, left in the sun to die, but it was just terribly uncomfortable. He'd broke the bonds when the sunlight had hit him, highlighting the sun runes on his arms, and heaved himself down off the crude cross. He'd ground up a matte grey rock, vaguely the same colour vampire dust would be, and laid it out at the bottom of the cross and smeared it across the wood. He'd waited in the distance, eyes acute thanks to the sun's power, watched as the weaklings rejoiced his demise. He had only turned and left, his teeth aching in his gums. 

His mother, golden being that she was, when he approached her about it, had stroked his hair. 

"Those fangs of yours are so different from normal." She said, examining his four fangs unbiasedly. "They're akin to those of a snake, over a vampire. Thin and long, wicked in their sharpness. They have come down, though, so they will go back up. Think on it, my dear, and control it like you do the light that eminates from your skin, the glow that overtakes your eyes and bleaches your hair out."

The whole of the Earth changed in the years he'd existed. 

Old lakes had become seas, then spilled into oceans. Whole islands and sections of land had vanished under the approaching water. Mountain ranges rose overnight and every time he left his home the whole of the air was warmer. The space between him and the sun became thicker, heat and water filling the air. Malcontented liquid fire bubbled its resentment into power and exploded, shattering the rock around it, sending debris millions of miles in all directions. And over and over, the dryads, nymphs and nereids taking to fostering life in the wastelands of the craters left behind. Forests, plains, deserts, tundra, jungle, prairie, ,glacier, grassland - he'd seen each section of the world change and rearrange itself, felt the movement of the worldly plates under him. He watched a frightened sub-species grow into an even more fearful, dominate ultraspecies - those with an inborn fear/god complex which seemed to tell them they had the right to decide who lives and who dies. Their success was dependant on the skill of their prey. He'd never been below them on the food chain, and he never would be. 

His mother gave up on her life when her grotto fell dark, ascending to the stars. His siblings had gone to their own corners of the earth and fallen victim to witch hunts and mysticism. He alone still walked, still lived. His footsteps, clad in all manner of things through the millenia, were now in proper dress shoes, laced smartly as they traced their pathways through the streets of Incheon, the Yellow Sea breeze ruffling his neatly kept hair. The sun was setting, the brilliant oranges fading to purple. 

So sleepless, all the time, twenty millenia worth of sunrises and sunsets in his mind - days, weeks, months, years, centuries bearing to marker on his mind. Nineteen millenia roaming the world alone, avoiding pyres and dodging kinship at every turn, an idle observer in the scope of the world. A perfect immortal walking the surfaces of the contients as they drifted and looking down into depths that used to be homes and were now shores. He didn't need anything other than to occasional reach out to the sun or the moon and they would reward their grandchild with vitality, caressing and soothing his soul in a way no others had quite managed to do. 

He lived in the modern state of Korea now, his appearance fitting in best here and the other Asian nations, though the human races were spread far enough now that he could theoretically be anywhere without raising any eyebrows. But he was here now, just because he could be. A few short centuries ago, he'd been in Rome, before that, watched Troy burn, attended Japanese warcouncils. He'd been there when the pyramids in Egypt and Peru had been built, occasionally stopped by Machu Pichu to commemorate dead friends, both human and otherwise. 

He used to take joy in being a terror - was ruthlessly violent and inspired hundreds, thousands of terrifying legends. He'd been diefied in hundreds of religions, knew where the temples to him were and walked the courses of his history so many times they had little meaning. So many ages, so many different names, he'd forgotten them all. 

TOP. 

That's what they called him now, these Hunters. Fancied themselves superior, they did. But what for? When stakes and sunlight won't kill him, what use were bullets, no matter how fast they're fired? No piercing round could take enough of him to kill him, there was no missle he could not shield himself from, no assassin he could not outrun. He was TOP, the king of the monsters. 

Not that they knew what he looked like to catch him. 

He was a fable in their minds. A legend, a myth, whispered in the deeper parts of the world. No one knew who he was to look at him. He didn't need more than a sun or moonlit walk every year or so to keep him alive and honestly, what more did he have to do with all of this time? No creature recognized him for more than he was; always fully covering any possible rune that developed over the years. He didn't need to glow in mid-day, thank you, if he wanted to keep this long-established anonimity cloaking him. There were few creatures old enough to know his face well enough to recognize him, to know his true power. And even they had hidden now, great powers like Poseidon the Earth-Shaker, Thetis, Scylla, Charybdis, Aruna hiding in the depths of the oceans the humans would never be able to reach. 

A Hunter walked past him as he watched the waves on the boardwalk.

"Have you noticed anything unusual, sir?" The young woman asked, face serious and clan tags sewn into the inside of her jacket. 

"Nothing more than usual." His voice rumbled, rich and warm despite not having spoken in close to two years. He's gone much longer than that, aimless in vast forests and dark cave systems, but he didn't like loneliness when he wasn't able to look at the passing faces of generations. 

"Are you sure? There's been rumour of a flying beast that's just moved into the area."

"Nothing more odd has appeared today than me." He replied, calm and clean. There was no need to get aggravated - no weapon she could possibly be carrying could kill him. Sometimes he wondered why he was so set on staying alive even though he had nothing worth living for. 

"Well, let us know if you do see something."

"No thank you." He rumbled back.

She bauked. "You must. This is a government imperative."

He smiled at her, hands in the pockets of his black slacks. "Your hunt is not my issue. Your chase does not affect me. Government or not, you cannot force me into anything."

"What's your name?"

"I don't remember."

"Don't play coy."

"I hear they call me TOP now. Make of that what you will." His legs carried him unhurriedly down the rest of the pier. She huffed, taking his words for a jest, and moved on. He vaguely wondered how many of the Hunters he'd had amicable conversation with over the course of the last millenia. Then again, he could not know - dates and places blurred together, only coming to him when he would look to a documentary and think of a person who had been there, someone he'd liked, and call out everything wrong in his mind. That was the price of never needing or thinking to sleep, he supposed. 

He only knew it was evening because his body told him of the shift of light, his hair loosing its golden sheen and turning blue. His runes would not light up at night, but he'd gained such a habit over these last thousand years. He was always covered, only his hands and face, sometimes a bit of his throat, exposed so the shimmering white-gold scriptures on his body could not be seen. No more obvious way to reveal himself, save perhaps letting his hair turn white, as it was wont to do when he used his power. 

There was a splash below him, and he leant over the edge. 

Faint surprise bloomed in his chest, watching a Siren pull a dryad onto the shore, his tail flickering anxiously. Vague curiosity at such an unlikely partnership stirred him to help the creatures. 

The Siren was visibly startled when he appeared next to him, gently lifting the dryad's hand in his own, his nails faintly blue in sheen. An invisible spark of his acquired sunlight didn't rouse the being, so he put his hand on the younger being's chest and lit his palm, the White magic jumpstarting the dryad's soul once more, closing and sealing the hole left there. 

Pity stirred in him for the creature, clearly a product of the deforestation taking place. He didn't know anymore the pains of loss, but just the physical pain caused by it would be callous to say the least. He had long since outlived being maleficent, lost the sensation of pleasure in all its forms tens of thousands of years ago. 

The dryad choked to life on the sand and the Siren stared at him with wide eyes. "Seunghyun."

His mother's voice, thought long abandoned, played in his mind.  _"My child, Seunghyun the Dark_. _"_

"Where did you learn that?" He asked, helping the dryad sit up to vomit up the semi-suffocating seawater. 

"The deepest creatures of the ocean don't forget anything. Thetis does not forget the names of the men who seen her son fall, least of all an Elder Vampire."

He met the Siren's eyes. "You have me at a disadvantage."

"Oh! I'm Daesung and this is my friend, Seungri."

"You're both so young."

Daesung gathered Seungri in his arms, protective but not from him. The smile he offered was blindingly brilliant, as warm on his being as the sun, his voice catching on his vocal prowess as he got more excited. "Perhaps, but we're cute."

Seungri looked up at Daesung like he was crazy, but TOP felt a laugh bubble up his throat, mirth filling his being as he reached over, petting Daesung softly, then Seungri. They were both so warm, like they, too, were children of the sun. His heart reached out to them in companionship, a streak of protectiveness he couldn't explain resurging in his soul. "Yes you are."

"Dae, who is this?" Seungri tried to whisper.

"Seunghyun the Dark. I hear his mother was somewhat of a comedian in her time." Daesung smiled again and he didn't even have to think about smiling back. 

"Seunghyun the Dark? Never heard of him."

"TOP."

Seungri's eyes blew wide and he turned to stare at the Elder in unfiltered reverence. "And you just . . . saved my life?"

TOP shrugged. "Kickstarted your system. Nothing much."

"Wow." Seungri breathed. 

"Come, up. You can't be seen here so soon." He pulled them to their feet, faintly surprised when Daesung was suddenly standing over swimming. 

"I thought he was a myth!" Seungri whispered excitedly as TOP lead them away from the shore to his modest home a few blocks away. 


	4. G-Dragon

He came from the bowels of the earth, gestated in the supervolcano under the island known as Thera, now Santorini. He didn't remember the magma, only the feeling of being launched into the air, his body breaking into the clouds, his wings cracking open and catching on the thin air. It had been glorious to feel the wind around him, the rush of the flight. 

His kind were a rare sort, earth-created rather than born. While Magi, of all varieties, were the children of their elements, were perhaps the closest in creation nature, his kind were the strangest. 

All forming in fire from small bits of gathered rock able to stand the heat, they were born by being launched into the sky, where they would mostly stay, looking down on their mother. Their nature, too, was inherently different each time. For example, he was wrapped in darkness from the moment his body rocketed into sky, the murky essense filling his lungs and voice, darkening the mireless blue to a purpled black even in the stark of day. 

He'd never had much interest in the pesky mammal ants on the flatlands. Not until their structures started to climb and things were launched his way did he look into them, decending for the first time on a not-so distant meadow. His body shrunk to fit in the small area, his tail and wings shrinking back and melting into his body, scales retreating into smooth, faintly luminescent skin. It felt strange to have locks of hair appear, irritating for the first while during the time his dragon sensibilities retreated for a more human set of qualities. 

Of course, when he landed to explore these primitive beings, he was greeted much kinder than he had been when he'd been as a dragon. They took him in, gave him food and rest, revelled in festivals with him and given him a name -  _Jiyong; Ji-dragon; G-Dragon_. 

He'd kept himself smaller than his original form, maybe only an equivalent of his strangely lithe and short human facade, and flew around that way, occasionally coming back to the land that gave him his name. He didn't care to recall all of the old names places had, save for Thera, preferring to keep up with the times rather than linger in the past. After all, his mother never lingered, despite her age, and if he couldn't keep up with her, then there was no point in continuing to ride the currents of time. This land, while perhaps not his  _birthplace_  was his  _home_  and he liked it here, this place called  _Korea_. 

But he felt the need to stretch himself, expand his size and dominate the wind currents in a way he hadn't for long years, so that's what he did. 

When he landed again, he overheard those bastard Hunters discussing him (because there was no other inky black dragon to have ever been in Korea) and how to kill him, the ungrateful wretches. 

He'd never harmed a human, despite how many times he'd been fired upon, forced out of homes or offered as a sacrifice to some incubi or vampire because he was apparently very  _pretty_. He had no will to, no want to eat them or their monuments despite how obnoxious their buildings became as the years progressed. But it wasn't until their gleaming silver and glass towers pierced the clouds into his domain that they really gathered the nerve to take aim at him, specifically. 

He had never done anything wrong, never terrorized, never harmed, never took advantage, never strayed into dense human territories. All he wanted was to be allowed to fly in peace, feel the burn of the sun as he breached the final layers of cloud. He'd been peaceful, never in conflict.

Now his shoulder and wing were screaming an unfamiliar agony, like fire inside his body, something unnatural lodged in his flesh. His wing membrane was burning in impossible fire, huge chunks ripped off, scales shorn off by jagged, steaming metal and he was plummeting. No freefall had ever scared him like this, he'd never had this loss of control in the air, never felt the winds turn against him quite like this. Another explosion rocked the air next to him, sending him hurtling with new velocity in another direction, towards water. 

Just as he was about to smash into the deceptively liquid surface of the sea, his small body was wrapped up in warm-ish foam, then ice-chilled water that extinguished the burn, gentle on the aggravated flesh. The sensation of strong limbs around his torso was a comfort, because they were not human, did not belong to a Hunter. They were Ethereal, if the way they commanded the waves was any indication. 

He didn't know how long this invisible water creature carried him, not even sure if he was awake or alive through all of it, but suddenly there was moon and street light, the beautiful caramel face of a Siren hovering over him, caressing the charred scales of his face. 

"Can you shift human for me? I can't bring you home like this."

"Home?" He murmured, voice higher and more nasally than normal. 

The Siren nodded, stroking over his face. "Please, shift for me."

He did as he was told, letting the beautiful creature pick him up, careful of the burning on his back and the shards of metal buried in the meat of his shoulder.

He woke again to a gentle hum, his entire body encased in a fine sheen of water, save his mouth and nose, which was refracting light of all colours on the ceiling. 

"Don't worry." The panda-eyed face of a dryad appeared in his view, smiling kindly, youthfully. "It's just TOP-hyung. He's got light healing magic or something and he's fixing your back and shoulder. Daesung-hyung's got you in water, so the energy conducts better, I think."

"The Siren?" He rasped, his throat unbearably dry.

"That's the one." The dryad looked up above him, then reached back to a something else unseen, appearing once more with a leaf between his fingers. "Here. Chew on this. It'll abate your hunger and fix that dry mouth of yours."

He took the leaf when the dryad put it in his mouth, a cool, soothing sensation spreading through his mouth and down the back of this throat. "Thanks. What's your name?"

"Seungri." The dryad replied, smiling crookedly, a little mischieviously. "You're pretty cute, for a dragon. How old are you?"

"Mmm." he chewed thoughtfully. "Three and a half thousand? Maybe four. I never kept track of time."

"What volcano did you come out of?" A deep rumble came from above him, thick and sending shivers down his back.

"Thera. I came from Thera."

"Three thousand six hundred, then." The voice answered. 

"Were you there, hyung?" Seungri asked. 

"No, but I was around Greece at the time. It was a catastrophe, honestly. So many people starved out and the sun was blocked for longer and longer."

"Who's speaking?" He asked, feeling uncomfortably excluded. This was the first time he'd really, properly interacted with other Ethereal races and he felt horribly socially bereft. 

"TOP-hyung." Seungri chirped. "He's an Elder Vampire."

He almost choked on the leaf he was shocked so still. "What? But they were killed off thousands of years ago. Before I was launched."

"Well, TOP-hyung beats the odds." Seungri smiled like such an age was his own achievement. "What's your name?"

"G-Dragon." He replied automatically, then blinked. "Eh, Jiyong. The name I was given is Jiyong."

"Take the leaf from his mouth." TOP commanded. "He needs to sleep more."

Seungri plucked it out of his mouth and left the room, a small smile and wave seeing him off. "Good luck, YongYonggie!"

"That boy." TOP sighed. The water around Jiyong shifted, cradling him gently. "Jiyong, then. Daesung is going to sing you to sleep again. Please do not fight him. Repairing this will hurt you alot and I would rather you not remember this after already getting blown out of the air by anti-aircraft guns in the firstplace."

"What's your real name?" Jiyong gasped, feeling a burn start at the base of his spine, a lullaby starting that sounded like he was listening to it across the ocean. Its hypnotic effects were no less potent, however, and he could feel himself slipping away.

"My real name is Seunghyun, little dragon. Seunghyun the Dark."

Jiyong knew that name, from bird-whispers, but was not frightened by it. A dragon was a child of the earth, dominant in all below it, and even if Seunghyun was the grandchild of the sun and the moon, this was a dragon's home domain. 


	5. Taeyang

The first time he'd ever seen a human had been when two crouched men fell through one of his cave walls. 

The fall had been a long one, and he'd gone over to sniff the men, see if they were still alive. 

He wasn't the largest hellhound there was, but apparently his small but muscular form had been enough to scare the man. He didn't quite know how the other man had seen him in the darkness, with his coat being a charcoal black, but he would later realize it was due to the omnipresent glow of the fur along his spine, where the magic for his fire simmered, kept his whole body warm even in the damp chill of the cave. 

"Monster!" One of the men wheezed, his leg bent funny underneath him.

He cowered back, the man's voice painfully loud in a place that was used to only gentle whispers, simpering whines and the soft  _swish_  of paw and fur on stone. Gingerly, he shifted form, willing his spine to keep glowing to be able to see with his lesser human vision. He crept toward the wounded man, the other smelling of death if his awkwardly bent neck didn't already give him away, keeping a distance between them.

"I'm not going to hurt you." He said, trying to raise his voice, but keep it calm and soothing, soft. "Is your leg broken?"

"No! Stay away from me!" He screeched, trying to move on impulse, then screaming in agony as pain flared up white-hot in his shin. 

"No, no, don't move." He tried to soothe the man, staying away. "Is there someone at the end of your tunnel I can go get to help you?"

"No! Stay away from us! All of us! Demon!"

He moved quietly over to the hole, sniffing it. "Helhound, actually. I'm a hellhound."

The man's terrified and pained screaming eventually did call someone else down, but what he hadn't expected was for them to come down with these long things in their hands, point them at him and  _hurt_  him. 

Betrayed for his efforts, he shifted back to his hound form and dashed deeper into the cave system to clean and treat his wounds. The new men gave chase, lodging hot (which usually didn't bother him) metal into his muscles. They dogged him until he reached what was once his antechamber of smooth, dark rock, but was now torn apart by a massive, terrible, gleaming machine with jagged silver teeth more vicious than the pointed things on the end of the mens' sticks. 

He dodged around them, startling more of these newer new men, and dashed as fast he could up their tunnels, weaving through the rough atrocities against the rock until he came to a yellow mechanism leading vertically up to what he assumed was sunlight above. But he couldn't work the contraption in his current form, assuming he could understand how as a human, and he was significantly more vulnerable in his bare skin. 

"Got ya now, you filthy beast." One of the men snarled. He raised his hackles in return, teeth gleaming crimson in the lamplight. "C'mon then, you dirty animal,  _attack me_."

He growled, rankled enough to let the control over his fire slip. His whole coat burst into flame, then, as they bauked, he yowled and his fire jumped from him.

He'd been proud of what he'd done then, escaped with his life in tact and the men dead, ashes not to be distingushed from one person to another. He wasn't so much now, with the benefit of hindsight. He'd killed terrified miners only down there to do a job. Perhaps they had attacked him with bayonets, but to them, he deserved the terror and the reaction and, having lived amongst them now, understood why they would think that way. 

To be fair, there was still many of the Ethereal races that liked to terrorize, especially the younglings. But not all of them felt that way. Had he never been forced out of his caves, he would likely have never left. He had his dark rocks and his magma pools and he was fine. His family would come to visit sometimes, so would suitors, though he was never very interested in those. Sometimes, when he was huddled in a forest or an abandoned building, curled around himself in hound form to keep himself warm through desolate winters, he severely missed his old caves. He'd heard of it collapsing about ten years after he'd run from it, but he didn't know if that would be enough to keep the humans out of it for long. He didn't want to risk going back, since Hunters dogged all of the places where Ethereal races had once been. But he'd missed it, the warmth he felt there and sometimes his soul yearned to go back, but he couldn't. He wasn't willing to compromise himself or his family, who lived under Rome and were already careful of being so close to the Vatican. No, he could deal with a few measly months of cold if they were safe. 

But, in times like this, he wondered if that wouldn't have been the better option. Instead of trying to help that miner, if he had only dove into his magma and travelled back to his family, stayed there with them. His blood, thick and sizzling, a little florescent in the darkness of the city alley, was drippling onto the concrete. With the sear marks it left behind, it wouldn't be hard to find him, for sure. Each time he tried to move, however, the bullet holes in him stretched and tore even more. 

"I didn't even  _do_  anything." He whispered, tears sliding down his cheeks. "I've  _never_  done anything."

As much as he'd like his last moments to be braver ones, the Hunters turning into his alley with dark smiles that looked more fiendish than his hound form's snarl, he knew he was going to die. It didn't matter if they got satisfaction out of seeing him weak and disheartened - he wouldn't be around to deal with the repercussions. They were likely going to cut off his head, then cut his body apart, throw his remains into a sewer or bring him back as a trophy. Hellhounds were some of the more common of the races, so it wouldn't be a massive victory, but it would be a prize, and he knew that's what they wanted. They could have let him be. He wasn't being disruptive, even by human standards. He had been standing at a food truck, his stomach  _really_  interested in getting some of the squid tempura that had been dogging the square all day and making his mouth water. To be honest, he wasn't even sure how they'd found him - there was nothing inhuman about his human form, no strange lights or markings. Maybe how his hair was blonde except for the inch above the roots? Oh well, it didn't matter much now. They would kill him, and he would die thinking about how waiting to eat was his only regret. He closed his eyes, head down, as they approached, his posture submissive in the hopes they would make it fast. 

Now, he didn't know what death smelt like, because his eyes were still closed, but clean salt and sea, along with the wait hint of fertile soil, sunlight and restful darkness probably weren't it. Distantly, like he could hear it across worlds and oceans, there was an old Ethereal rest song being sung. His soul seemed to sense that it wasn't some memory of his bearer, rather that of a seafaring creature, a Mer or a Siren. 

 _Probably a Siren_. He thought.  _Mer don't have such lovely voices. Their pride is in their colours._

Even though he knew it was sirensong, he allowed himself to get lost in it, humming the lyrics and tune back at the distant ringing, content in the childish peace it brought him. Darkness swept through his subconscious, blanketing him in soothing nothingness and allowing his mind to slow down, his body to relax into a sensation that felt like dozing in a sunlight meadow. The singing got stronger and awareness slipped from him.

It didn't feel like that much longer before he came awake again, but the sensation of fingers running through his hair was definitely a new one. He opened his eyes, his first time wanting to since he'd been evicted from his caves, and looked up at a thin, lanky man with thick black hair. The man seemed to reallize his wakefulness and looked down at him, purple eyes flucuating to blackness then into lavender as he smiled. 

"Welcome back to the waking world, hellhound." He pet him again. "I'm Jiyong. Or G-Dragon. Whichever you prefer."

"My birthname is Yongbae. The name given to me at maturity is Taeyang."

"Taeyang, then." Jiyong pet him with a sympathetic smile. "Don't worry now. You're safe here. These people saved me, too."

"Hunters?"

"Yeah." Jiyong shuddered, purpled scales appearing around his eyes before they vanished again. "Shot me out of the sky. I don't know why. Hell, it was humans that gave me my name."

He felt like that was a story he would ask the dragon about once they were actually friends, if that would ever happen. 

Suddenly, a dryad popped into his vision, his hair-grass a thick and healthy earthen brown. "Good to see you awake! When Daesung found you, we weren't sure you were going to live. Didn't look like you wanted to. Your injuries were less severe than they looked, though, so you're fine now. I'm Seungri."

"Taeyang. Who's Daesung?"

"He's the Siren that brought you here." A velvety dark voice washed into the room, then a man covered neck to toe. He smiled softly at the hellhound, Seungri moving out of the way so he could stroke his hand over his forehead. "I'm Seunghyun. You can call me TOP, if you'd prefer. You're in my home in Incheon right now where you're welcome to stay, but if you'd prefer to leave, you're able to. I, personally, like this house and this city much better than Seoul."

"Are there food trucks here?"

Seunghyun laughed. "Yes, there are. Though I daresay Daesung makes pretty good squid tempura too."

"Wha-"

"You were mumbling about it in your sleep." Seungri beamed. 

"Do you think you'll stay?" Jiyong asked. "I didn't have a home before this either, so I can promise you it's really nice here. Way better than being alone."

"Tempura. Then I'll decide."

There was a ringing laugh from the kitchen that made his heart skip a beat and an equally beautiful voice that called. "Come on then!"


	6. Seunghyun the Dark

Daesung awoke blearily, his body sore and stiff in a way he had no memory of. He felt like an iceburg adrift in the Atlantic, like some of the Albatros had told him about when he'd followed EXO-M's pod to British Columbia (the leader, Kris, was visiting his mother and the rest of the pod had wanted to come). Even his magic was sluggish, the first thing that sent a terrified bolt down his spine and rousing him completely from his unnatural slumber. 

Sitting up was an arduous task, but once he'd managed to get his hands under him and push up, he found himself looking at a blank white room - sterile, but in an unfriendly way. No doctor or patient would appreciate this horrible, sickly box. There weren't even any other fixtures in the room, only small vents close to the ceiling. It sprewed white mist into the room that vapourized, but he knew that it remained, locked with him behind the thick fourth glass wall.

A Hunter stood there, looking down at him the same way Seungri looked at locusts - disgust and mistrust coupled with venom and loathing. By human standards, this girl couldn't have been more than twenty. She had an impish face, like Seungri did, with baby fat clinging to her jaw and shoulders, though there was undeniably power in those wicked limbs. 

"Like it in there?" She asked, voice blank but eyes sneering. 

HIs body felt thick, slow to respond. It felt like he had to break his shoulders out of thick stone to move them, and even then they were unwilling and sluggish. 

She pointed idly to the vents. "Liquid nitrogen. Not too much, not too little. We don't want to kill you yet."

Oh.  _Oh._

Daesung was a deep-sea creature and cold didn't affect him like other things. But  _freezing_  was not something he was immune to, considering that when he didn't hold his outer shell together, he was completely salty water inside. 

"I gotta say, though, it's been interesting to watch you." She commented flippantly. "Sirens don't come out of the water and are so difficult to catch. I've never got to see one up close before. You're an interesting one, for sure. I'm almost sorry to see such a specimen go."

He lowered his head, collapsing his body in on itself in a vain attempt to keep warm. 

"Funny, though." She mused. "No matter what we did to you, those four little hole scars on the back of your neck don't leave. Where did you get them, I wonder? Maybe there was something else in Incheon other than you four. Doesn't matter. Your home is charcoal and we'll leave it to the archaeologists of the future to decide whether our preservation of you was whole enough."

He shivered, terror tingling across his body worse than any chill. Seunghyun's fang marks on the nape of his neck, usually hidden by his hair, were  _burning_. It was searingly painful, but at the same time he was grateful. Pain kept him focused, awake and functioning, as well as a warmth settling in his soul that was not as easily daunted by the cold as his waters were. 

* * *

Seungri wanted to die. Thick, arid air and empty sand filled his little boxy room and it was  _draining the life out of him_. 

There was no water, no life, to recourse to grow here and as the hours passed, it leeched the water right out of him. He felt brittle and vulnerable, something being in the fertile bend of Incheon and trapped between Daesung and Seunghyun had never occurred to him. It was suffocating, like his soul was being burned away from the outside in.

He never thought he'd ever feel the same things he did when his forest was ripped out of him, and he definitely hadn't expected it to work oppositely when it came back around. 

"It looks good on you."

Seungri would have scowled if he wasn't afraid of part of his face falling off as he decayed. As it was, his head grass was a sickly white, robbed of all substance during his starvation. He knew his voice wasn't trees-whispering-in-the-wind anymore, but he spoke anyway. 

"Choke."

"Swallow." The man smirked back, a middle-aged decrepid sickness. 

"Only on special occasions."

The man huffed a soft laugh, almost fond, but too cynical. "Don't you think dehydration counts as a special occasion?"

His lips quirked without his permission. "If you let me blow Daesung, I'll make the show worth your while."

"Naughty, naughty. A dryad and a Siren? What kind of unholy games have  _you_  been playing behind closed doors?"

"What can I say? He's a tall drink of water."

"Promises won't save you now." The man continued to smile. 

"I'm well aware." He replied, sitting down at the back of the room and facing him blankly. "But that doesn't mean I have to go down quietly."

"Cute."

He shrugged. "I'm not worried."

"Maybe you should be."

Seungri ran his hand through his grass, his fingers lingering a beat too long on the fang marks on the back of his neck, feeling the furor in the burn. "Whatever."

* * *

Jiyong had cloaked the room in darkness, unwilling to let the wicked Hunters see him weak and nervous. His hand was clasped over his neck like a prayer as he huddled in a corner, fearful and nervous. He wanted to back home to Seunghyun's small house in Incheon, bask in the beach sunlight and snooze on the sunwarmed rocks. 

"You can't possibly have the energy to keep it up forever, dragon." The Hunter he'd awoken to calling out to him. Jiyong knew he was correct too, but he was stubborn and would rather die in his murk than exposed to these villains. He would wrap himself in his power and weaken to nothing, become pummus and ash before he would let them see his suffering. 

"Antisocial, hmm? That's fine. We have camera in there that can sift through that voodoo of yours, don't worry. Even if you can't see us, we will always be able to see you."

He didn't believe that. His darkness wasn't something to be pierced by some lackwit's machines. Absolutely not.

His room was small, perhaps the size of a fridge box. He felt confined and restricted, his mind screaming at him to escape back to the sky. This was no comforting surrounding, like his mother, Thera, nor the sweet, cool embrace of Daesung. No, this was cruel and choking and mental agony. It had been such an adjustment to Seunghyun's home, assisted only by the feeling of Seungri, breathing life, and Daesung, lethargic tide, bracketting his sleeping form, Seunghyun's sky-born hand caressing his hair. Sometimes he was still afraid, the claustrophobia getting him worked and restless, but Daesung's sweet voice would lull him, and later, Taeyang's unquenchable heat. 

He wanted one of them here with him now, and the only thing keeping him grounded was Seunghyun's burning on his neck. He just wanted to live peacefully with his family, coven, whathaveyou, and sleep, eat, fly. He wanted to hear Daesung sing, nuzzle Seungri's mossy scalp, cuddle Taeyang's furry fire (and bask in their kindred flame) and purr himself to sleep as Seunghyun stroked over his scales. 

The thought that he may never see them again only stoked his fears. His solitary nature had been overtaken by affection and though their roundabout family was new, it wasn't something he was willing to let go of so easily. 

Idly, as the Hunter banged on the glass once more to try and garner his attention, he wondered how much of his death TOP would feel.

* * *

Taeyang was a snarling mess, having rubbed raw and torn his skin as he pulled and writhed in his shackles. 

The Hunter out front of his cage had found himself a chair, smirking and laughing as he yanked once more so violently that he dislocated his arm. He didn't care. He wanted out, needed out. He was so livid, even without food and water, that his hair was ablaze and his teeth had all sharpened isnide his mouth. Oh, he was furious.

He wasn't violent - his kind didn't even hunt like werewolves did. He wasn't vicious, outside of his sometimes sharp words, and he most certainly was more tolerant than this. But something in him was triggered once he woke up in chains and he had been a roaring, raging beast of a man ever since, his hair immediately setting itself aflame and his spin glowing a molten reddened yellow. 

"You're such a bad dog." The Hunter chastised. "Took at you, trying to destroy the furniture and tearing up the living room. What are we ever going to do with you?"

He snarled, thick and ugly, and lunged once more, unflinching at the way the heavy steel dug straight into the unprotected flesh of his throat. He would cut off his own head if only he got to tear this man's throat out. Oh, he was so blinded by the bloodlust in his mind.

"You're not any good to us dead, mutt, so the least you can do is heel."

He gripped the chains close around his hands, dug his fingernails so hard into his palms they pierced the skin, then howled so loudly the man in front of him jerked off his chair, having to cover his ears. He slammed some button on the wall near the glass, a minty looking air poured into the room and Taeyang went slack, suspended in metal from the ceiling, the four puncture marks on the back of his neck staying molten long after he slumped down. 

* * *

" . . . hung for crimes against humanity - the threat their existence is to us."

Daesung only moved through resonated force as his face was struck. There was a sickening  _crack_  when the cane came down on Seungri's arm. Jiyong was bound tightly, an electrified collar jerking him awake again and again. Taeyang was bolted to the floor, chains on all of his extremedies and a muzzle on him. Noen of them knew that the human crowd thought of them. Some looked on with pity, others with confusion, most with blankness. 

"They may look human, but I assure you, they are not." The man speaking boomed across the speakers. "They are dangerous, but we have subdued them and before you, we will judge them."

A rough-looking young woman hauled Daesung up to the podium and locked him into the chair.

"This is a Siren, a folk known for luring sailors and beachgoers alike into the waters to eat them alive and sink their ships into the depths of the ocean to steal its wealth." The man announced. "We'll demonstrate. Jinho, make him  _sing_."

The stuck something into his neck, but he didn't flinch. His blue lips opened and his throat shaking as he began, his voice raspy and weak.

" _On the Morning Tide,/we'll hoist the sails to brave the crashing waves,/ won't you come with me,/and hear the ocean sigh,/and if to its depths it called us by our names,/ won't you sail to the shore with me . . ._  "

The people began to murmur, because Daesung's singing, no matter how poor, was a powerful force. He moved them to sorrow, his own suffering and longing laced into the ringing tone. 

"Ensnared already, are you? Did his song move you to  _sympathy_  for this vile creature?" The man rose in pitch, eyes on the crowd. "That is his magic, not his emotion. He does not know how to  _feel_ , only how to  _kill_  and that's what he'd been doing. Don't lie to yourselves and fall for his innocent looks. All of them are evil, violent creatures who'll-"

The lights of the stage blew out, along with the lamplight around the square. Even the lights inside the Hunters' home, the Tower of Saviours, went out. Golden lightning flashed across the sky, the boom loud enough to feel and strong enough as it struck the Tower's surface to blow out the glass. 

Taeyang, the only one able to twist enough to look around, spotted a tall man in black moving through the crowd.

"What the hell?" Jinho whispered, hands on Daesung's shoulders, though it was very obvious that part of his inner chest cavity had been frozen, along with his eyes, because they were closed and unmoving. He looked deathly ill. Seungri, too, was in particularly poor condition. His eyes were open, but void and the mosses and lichens that had once grown over his body were gone, died off. He looked almost like a rought wooden puppet, his hair hard and crunching when touched. Jiyong's wild eyes traced over the crowd, begging through his gag for help while Taeyang looked on, resigned and frustrated at himself for it. 

From within the crowd, there came a faint glow, like someone released the essence of dawn from a jar. 

"Don't let me interrupt you." A deep, liquid voice filled the ampitheatre. 

Humans moved aside as a man, dressed in black and hair a crystaline white, standing off his head, but still looking soft and flexible. His eyes were closed and he was looking down, but he slowly shed his jacket, then his vest, his dress shirt, his undershirt. All along his body were white-hot glowing runes, scriptures lit from behind to shine out at the reader. The closer he got, the stronger the light got until he was illuminating the whole theatre. 

"Kill him!" The man commanding the ceremony cried out, but the walking man raised his hand and the same golden lighting struck from nowhere, searing the Hunters reaching for weapons. It struck Jinho, dropping her to her knees with a scream. "What the fuck?!"

The walking man opened his eyes and those who attempted to meet his gaze were blinded by the glare of the sun trapped within. "Should not the most feared legends come from somewhere? And should they have been vanquished, do you not think those responsible would brag until history wrote them in to silence them before death?"

The man on stage went white. Taeyang and Jiyong looked at each other, still not quite sure what was going on. Only Daesung's soft, sweet and so broken voice reached through the ensuing silence. 

"Save me, hyung."

Seungri came more awake, then, returning to the present and unconsciously moving towards the warm light emitting from the man. "Hyung . . . " He echoed, empty of understanding.

The light man looked over at them, face softening momentarily. When he turned back to the Hunter leader, he roared, the very earth around him trembling in guilt and his four fangs shining in wicked reflection. The furor contained in the sound cracked the concrete, the very ground trying to flee his rage. 

"What the fuck are you?" The Hunter whispered.

The light man bared his teeth in a cheap mockery of a smile. "You ask too late."

Jinho panted, crawling over to her boss, the skin of her arms blistering and peeling away. To her credit, she kept quiet in her agony. 

"Keep your slaves out of this." The man laughed. "They can't save you."

The Hunter knew he couldn't run from this man, but he also knew he had to flee eventually. Then the riddle clicked into place in his mind. "You're TOP."

Suddenly, the birth the human audience had given him wasn't near enough as they tried to fuse with walls in their need to escape. 

He smiled, fangs like white gold in the light. "I am Seunghyun the Dark. I'll not be named by  _you_. Now  _burn_ , ant."

Less than a second, he was upon the stage, palm pressed over the man's heart and hand emitting blinding radience. The Hunter leader fell to the ground, his heart charcoal in his chest. Jinho tried to crawl away from him, but he wasted little time with her, only reaching down long enough to grab her neck and crush it. The other Hunters affected by his lightning would die soon. He would raze the Tower to the ground, rain a holy fire the likes of which false Gods and weak immortals could never imagine to conjure. His light would burn through this human mire, his Rapture would end this game and they would never  _dare_ to so much as gaze wrongly at  _his family_. 

His hands were gentle but strong as he removed Taeyang's chains, his fingers running over broken skin and leaving behind clean bronze. Jiyong's bindings were less than paper, torn through without effort. The Dragon and the Hellhound fell into each other's arms, both beasts emerging. Hulking, board furred shoulders and massive wings coupled with inky velvet scales were still nothing on the prescence of the sun's grandchild, most favoured of them all. He was quick to Seungri, pouring simple and pure life energy and magic into the dryad, holding him close as his hair grew back to its rich, earthen browns, the mosses and lichens appeared over his body once more and his bark once more grew smooth; his arm even grew back together, that hand reaching up to trace the cheekbones of his hyung, the only of the four able to look directly at him. Lastly, he moved to Daesung, gently, gently pulling the Siren into his arms and sinking to the floor, pressing his palm to the singer's chest and filling the salty cavern with luminescence. 

When those navy eyes finally opened and his plush lips were pink once more, spread in a kindly smile, the light faded out. The runes were now fed by distant candlelight, hair a rich black and eyes filled with honey warmth. He pressed their foreheads together, holding Daesung tighter as the fear coiled in his chest finally unravelled and he began to cry. Like tiny liquid diamonds, they spilled across Seunghyun's cheekbones and down Daesung's cheeks, filled with light and promise and protection and  _care_. 

The other three gathered around. Jiyong made himself small once more, along with Taeyang to nuzzle lovingly into Seunghyun's strong, bare back. Seungri knelt beside Daesung, taking only his hand in quiet solidarity. 

The fire in the back of their necks, at the mark of their coven, ceased burning. 


	7. Epilogue: Sanctuary

It was only natural that they should flee Incheon, Seoul and Korea after Seunghyun's display. Outside the Tower of Saviours, there were plenty of others willing to hunt them down, conceive revenge against the victims. 

They had been able to shelter for some a few days in hotels and various things, places in rural areas that news had not yet reached. During those nights, Taeyang would curl up on one bed, looming furry body surprisingly light on furniture, with Jiyong nestled deep in his fur, sometimes whimpering in night terror until the other rumbled; assuring, comforting, lulling. The two maknaes would snuggle into Seunghyun, letting the vampire caress their hair, wrap them in sunlight. They would wrap themselves around him, nuzzling into his neck and sometimes even each other over his body. 

"Where are we going to go?" Jiyong whispered to him in the early hours of the morning, the maknaes still blissful in sleep, tangled in each other like vines and twined around his body. 

"We can't keep running from the humans forever, no matter how much money you have." Taeyang agreed. 

Seunghyun's hair was a reflective bronzed brown, his runes alight under his clothing. Daesung breathed against his neck, murmuring in the resonating tones of whale speech. Seungri's nasally breathing sounded like a gentle puff through a reed flute. 

"I know." He murmured, trying to decipher what Daesung was humming about, but unable. It had been many long years since he'd taken to sea, let alone speak to any of those creatures. Many were leery of his human visage and even those who knew him for himself were cautious of approaching him, if only for the power he weilded. "I did not protect you well enough. I'm not keen on making the same mistake twice."

Taeyang rumbled, content, but Jiyong kept staring. "Do you have a place in mind? It's risky, but I can fly us there."

"Kind of you to offer, but such a place cannot be reached by flight." He forced back the surges of power that hadn't been awake in him for many long millenia. He considered whether this was because of his coven marking on the back of their necks, how that magic connected their minds and he could understand the depths of their emotions: the friendships between Jiyong and Taeyang, Daesung and Seungri, how the maknaes loved him almost possessively. 

Jiyong laid back into Taeyang's fur, comfortable in the heat that form emitted, reminded of the fire and safety of his beloved Thera. "We'll go wherever you go."

Seunghyun smiled placatingly, eyes lighting up once more. "I'll protect you this time. 

* * *

Seunghyun hadn't known whether the mountain would still remember him, considering how long it had been since he'd come to his mother's grove. But it seemed the stone, too, was long-lived and had been still in his absence. It was surprisingly pleasant to know that some things just existed indefinitely, something other than himself. 

He had not told the others where he was taking them. There was no just way to explain it, but neither did they seem keen on asking. Daesung and Seungri were willing to go anywhere he said, his worldly experience outweighing theirs by far. Jiyong was tied to Taeyang, and they only seemed interested in taking in the scenery as they moved through the thick woodland. 

As they moved up the mountainside, the trees fell away and the earth turned to shale - thinly layered slate and shining obsidian flaking apart under the beat of rain and wind, cracking and slipping apart as they moved up the steep slope. He was grateful the mountain remembered him, the stone bending to a path for him to follow, weaving them through the decaying rock into a sheer cliffside. There, hidden from view above and below, was a crack-like opening marked by a tiny shoot bearing a single, hardy white flower - his mother's favourite, the Trillium. The small bloom swayed gracefully over to him, reaching out to him like an infant. He knelt down there, gently stroking his fingers over the silky petals, power leaking from him and nourishing the dainty sentry. The bloom shivered under his touch, but leaned in a little more, the petals stretching up to him, almost like they would close around his fingers and cuddle him there. Remembering the duty it had been given, the small flower's tiny, quivering stamen lit up silver, the little pollen bulbs on the end shimmering into gold. The crack opened to reveal a warm, damp crevasse, a rush of exotic air and long-forgotten, ancient and trapped magic rushing out. 

On Seunghyun, these magics were nothing new, even with how long it had been since he'd felt them. He consisted of these magics, absorbed them from his grandparents to exist. Jiyong, too, seemed familiar to the energy, though he cocked his head as if they were different. He supposed that earthen magic and fiery magic were executed differently, would feel different on stranger's skin. Taeyang shook himself thoroughly, stepping back from the magic and sneezing like it was dust instead of the remains of a White Mage. Daesung cocked his head at the rush, indifferent to it. Perhaps even his short lifetime was enough to prepare him - he knew many of the most ancient ones, hidden deep in the seas, so perhaps this wasn't too new to him either.

Seungri's reaction, however, was what grabbed Seunghyun's attention. The youngest one stepped towards the opening, his eyes glazed over and his body movement jilted, as if they were outside his control. He breathed in the thickness, body trembling with apparent ecstacy before dropping to the ground, limp. Daesung caught him, easing him into a comfortable embrace. 

"Seungri? What was that?" The Siren asked, gently stroking his fingers through the bark-coloured headgrass atop the dryad's head.

"Sire . . . " Seungri whimpered, jolting as the magic swept through him again. 

Seunghyun knelt next to the dryad and passed a hand over his smooth bark cheek, a sympathy tinging his smile. "Yes, maknae, it's the same magic. Your sire tree got its power from here."

Taeyang sniffed the dryad curiously, rumbling low when he couldn't sense anything. 

"But his sire tree is ashes." Daesung murmured, cuddling his first friend close. 

"The magic that made it his sire is not." Seunghyun countered. "I imagine he was never dosed with it so heavily. Bring him in and we'll allow him time to adjust."

* * *

When Seungri had recovered enough to bear his own weight and speak without a slur, Seunghyun lead them into the heart of the mountain, where his mother had lived. 

The hollow stone gave way to a massive cavern, towering trees and luminous leaves refracting light onto the pure gemstone walls, the soft golden petals of flowers shimmering in the eternal light and the whisper of lively green grasses passing close to the nutrient-soaked black soil. Simple grey stone lead to a treed alcove where there was a semblance of a small house, several shrub-grown beds sparking up their bloom as they sensed old life reentering the sanctuary. Creek and lake babbled in the distance, a small waterfall visible on the far side of the cavern. Butterflies matching the colours of the walls fluttered past with pixies hopping across their wings as they passed. 

Nervously, Seunghyun clasped his hands. "Do you like it?"

Seungri, still wobbly, threw himself into the vampire's arms and began to cry into his shirt. "Hyung . . . You're so amazing. How did you manage all of this?"

Mildly confused at the appearance of tears, Seunghyun stroked his hair and kissed his head. "It was my mother's cove. She remained here long after my siblings abandoned it to create their own magics, but gave up her life a long time ago."

"What do you mean?" Taeyang asked, gently nosing at the soft petals of a nearby flower. The eggshell blue petals reached up and tenderly embraced his sensitive nose, stroking lovingly over the parts of his muzzle they could reach.

"She was a White Mage, a child of the sun and the moon. She gave up her Ethereal form to ascend back to her parents. She's what the humans call the North Star now, a nova in her own right. But to do that, she had to abandon everything that came with being a White Mage, including her power. So, she left it here, in her most beloved grotto."

"Why haven't any of your siblings overtaken it, then? They were White Mages too, weren't they?" Jiyong questioned, leaning on Taeyang as he observed the cave of wonders.

"They were hunted quite thoroughly. They seemed to believe that their status would protect them, would prove to the humans their validity and proper prescence. It only made them more afraid and their sacred spaces were burned, their magics torn from them and their lives ripped away."

"Wow." Seungri breathed through his sobs. "How did you get passed that?"

He smiled gently down on Seungri, cradling the boy closer. "I was not a White Mage. In fact, I cannot control this place's energy. You would be a better caretaker than I, and that is the reason that in all my years, I've not come back. I would be a taint, a hinderance, to its growth. Should I have been here, it is possible that your sire would have never gotten the magic to spawn you in the first place, my dear little sapling."

Daesung had wandered over to the lake, the body of water stilling as if conscious. He reached out to it, fingers sliding along the glassy surface before there was a glad ripple and the waterfall once again picked up its thunder. It shuddered like a contented kitten settling in to nap, apparently approving the Siren to swim in it, command its depths. "I had no idea that I could affect freshwater."

"The magic of this place is strong, sentient in its own right. They all feel, even if they do not think, and they choose whether or not to accept you. All save me. Because I am her son, her only living child, I can command all of that I desire here." Seunghyun said, eyes still tracking Seungri as the dryad danced from tree to tree, his voice like reedsong and rustled leaves. His light brown headgrass, damaged twice over, deepened into a rich brown-black as the magic swept into his veins. Cracks in his bark, paleness in his lips faded as the green energy swept around him, embracing him entirely. Leaves, grasses, petals and pollen clung to him, eahc pressing their own kiss to his body, a proper steward to replace the caretaking their Queen had once done. 

Daesung came up his other side, leaning into Seunghyun's side and nuzzling into the smooth, flawless skin. "It's lovely. He was never so flawless even in his own forest."

"I'd imagine not. Nothing is so pure as this place - hidden away from filth and rot. No magic, no forest will ever compare to this."

"I suppose. The water magic is much weaker."

He stroked down the Siren's cheek carefully. "No water will ever be as rich and deep with memory or ancient creation spells as your beloved ocean. There is no comparison on any land, even this one, to match such magnificent power. And as pained as I am to seclude you from it, I am loathe, too, to let you go."

"I can understand." Daesung murmured, leaning into the soothing touch. He had never known light in the deep, but he wasn't sure now that he could live without that heat and strength in this palm, the guiding amber effervescence that was Seunghyun. He did not know how he had lived without the claiming coven mark on the back of his neck, contentedly cool as the breeze passed over it. "I spent too much time away from you once already."

Seunghyun's smile was rueful and self-depricating. "I won't allow that to happen ever again."

Daesung bent down, nimble fingers working the top buttons of his jacket and shirt, to kiss the flawless hollow of his throat. "I know. You promised once already."

Taeyang nosed under his free hand, eyes a baleful red at being left out of the attention. Really, such an overgrown puppy. Seunghyun tangled his fingers into his hair as Daesung shed his clothes, working the many layers off and away. The thousands of runes lit up, the internal light, trapped, reaching out to the new and fresh energy freely offered by the gemstones. 

Jiyong's hands came across his back, smoothing over the supple skin and kissing down his spine as he worked out the belt. "None of this. We're safe here, content. No more hiding. Not here."

So, as Seungri spread the mosses and grasses he had managed to save from his forest from his body to the well-receiving earth, Seunghyun allowed his coven to strip him naked, reveal all of his secrets and illuminate the power stored within him. His hair jumped from black to cinnamon brown. Taeyang was always as close to naked as allowed and when in hellhound form, he shredded any clothes he had been wearing. Jiyong was quick to rid himself of his cloth constriction; scales, talons, wings and a tail erupting across him. His smile was sharp-toothed, but still as genuine. Daesung shook himself out and his clothes shifted into his native compact and bare top half with his scaled and powerful lower half. He slid over to the water and into the cool fluid, quickly becoming friendly with the power within, no one able to resist Daesung's giggly charm. 

"We love it." Taeyang assured, nuzzling closer to him once more, his fur sleek and glossy in the unhindered sunlight. The fires along his spine was muted in contentment, unburning even as the vampire ran his hand through the illumination. "Thank you for bringing us here, to your home."

Seunghyun looked up to the North Star, soaking up his mother's blessing. "Not mine. It's never been mine."

Taeyang cocked his head.

"It is ours. Our Sanctuary." He pet the hellhound once more, letting his power - long dormant - spin life through him and beam across the woodlands and grassy plains. "Welcome home, my family."


End file.
